Databook on Lite-On PNIC-II

[Donald Becker]

On Sat, 1 Apr 2000, Bill Paul wrote:

> Donald Becker wrote

> > While Macronix and Lite-On have a close relationship, the PNIC-II is *not*
> > the same as the 98715. Beyond both being loosely Tulip clones, they are not
> > even close. A quick look at the driver sections will confirm this.
> 
> I'm sorry, but this is wrong. The LC82C115 chip is very, *very* similar
> to the 98715A. The differences are that it supports magic packet/Wake on
> LAN and has a 128-bit multicast hash table instead of a 512-bit table
...
> (except for the smaller hash table). The PNIC II is basically the 98715A
> with a few extra features (and one misfeature). In fact, when I open
...
> document properties, the document name is listed as "MX98715." This
> document *is* the 98715A datasheet, with updates. It even has the MXIC

I tracked this down.

The reason the 98715 and PNIC-II datasheets are similar is because of
documentation history, not design commonality.  The PNIC-II didn't have a
real datasheet, just as the PNIC was pretty much only difference notes.
When the design was transferred to Macronix they had to come up with
to-standards documentation for the chip.  So they wrote the datasheet by
starting from the 98715A document, since both were 21143 work-alikes.

So the chips are not the same, they were not even from the same design
team.  Only the documentation is common.  We can expect the next chip to
have the best of both designs.

Donald Becker
Scyld Computing Corporation, becker@scyld.com

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